COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTIONBlack Maria is an American inspired Black IPA. It is black as an stout and hoppy as an IPA. The beer has been brewed with a good amount of highly roasted Carafa Malts, but with a relatively low amount of caramel and chocolate malts. This way we get the burned bitter and delicate chocolate notes in the beers, that goes well with the bitter and fruity aromas of the hops. The lack of caramel and chocolate results in less residual sweetness that you normally pick up from an Stout. For the hops we wanted some hops that could stand up against the Carafa malts. Therefore we used a mix of Columbus, Centennial, Galaxy and Cascade for the hop profile.

8.1% ABV. Black IPA.
This poured out of the bottle with little or no head and sat in the glass looking every bit as smug as a properly brewed stout. Color was a beautiful creamy black brown at about 40°SRM.
The nose was redolent with ripe Taiwan lychees which happened to be in season at the time of this tasting. There were aromas suggesting sugar plums, icing sugar and a subtle floral note reminiscent of orchids.
The floral nature of the hops becomes more prominent in the palate in subsequent mouthfuls with some aroma of rose petals in the back of the throat reminiscent of rose syrup. All these flavors are appreciable thanks to the perfectly balanced carbonation. This is a roasty sort of ale at the end of the day and there are predictable burnt sugar, caramel flavors with the usual ume-like finish.
Good quality bitter hops at the end bitter, almost shocking but in a good way. Herbaceous. Hyssop.
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This is american pale ale style, but pitch black. It’s also smoky and I would say, there’s some Brett. Aromatic and bitter on the palate. A very well made black IPA and you don’t taste the high alcohol.

Had this beer couple of days ago and all I remember is it had typical dry roasty and hoppy notes for a heavily hopped stout. I wasn’t super enthusiastic about it but had pleasure to drink it. It’s very rare I write comments days after I actually had the beer. Writing from memory isn’t easy since I had lots of other beers afterwards.

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